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Inside Microsoft's New Digital Photo Project
robyn217 writes "While Microsoft Research plays 'Big Brother' to a young hiker's trip across North America, it breaks new ground in digital photography by combining metadata, like location via GPS, with the image. Its online presence looks impressive as it displays digital photo albums on a map of the world, but it's slow and unwieldy for the most part and may not be better than a standard travelogue site. This week, I took a closer look at the project currently named the World-Wide Media eXchange (WWMX)."
I'm glad microsoft is getting into this kind of thing. National Geographic has been doing a dismal job over the past few months, and there really are not enough players in the game. It's funny, in my experience most geeks really do like the great outdoors, so it seems a proper marriage to me!
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They have been using embeded data in TIFFs for years in nav. programs that overlayed a map image with altitude and lat/long.
Once there is a large enough dataset of pictures (and that really is the key to making more then a travelog), I like the idea of combining something like this with a satalite imaging service so you can feel like you are really zooming in.
To me it has the potential to help provide context to the places that you here about on the news or that students are assigned to research. Plus, it's just plain neat!
I have a lot of good ideas for the software, and have already written out a lot of db schema and logic, but I am having a hard time finding high resolution maps which I may use legally, and this was discouraging. Most of the big satellite image companies want an arm and a leg for the right to display their images on your site. Anyone know of a place where I can get at least semi-high resolution satellite maps, like 5m or better, that I'll have the rights to display on my website?
I assume that I would release the software under the GPL without any maps included, but its no fun writing software which nobody can really use unless they purchase satellite imagery!
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
A few years ago an old Jeep buddy of mine mentioned an idea for a web site like this - people could drive around Utah, take pictures, and record the GPS coordinates of where the picture was taken so that others could find the same place for camping/etc.
This just seems to do something of what iPhoto does - attaches some meta-data (in this case, GPS coordinates, time&date, etc) to the file.
I'd say this could be pretty cool, though of course I'd like to see an open standard used and the ability to turn it off. I don't think I mind all cell phones by 2005 having GPS (the ability to save lives could be huge for 9-1-1 services), but I want the capacity to shut the damn thing off so Psycho Boy Jones can't jump me because he didn't like my recipe for spicy sweet mashed potatos.
Side note for those worried about privacy: there was a story I was reading about a service for cell phones in Japan. Suppose your spouse calls and wants a picture of where you are, and instead of working late at the office (like you said you were), you were out at the bar with your friends. This service will forward a picture of your office to them instead of your current location.
With GPS being mandatory in cell phones by 2005 (at least according to the article), you wonder how other people will tap into it? Is this a 9-1-1 services only thing, or is this "add to my GPS" list so people in other phones have your coordinates at all time? (Something that might be a new level of parental control when your teenager goes out with friends for the night....)
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Maybe someday this could be put to use on something like mapquest. Do a search, pop up with a picture of your location, this sure as hell beats any map, when the user can SEE where they are going.
I cant remember how many times i have been stuck guessing which building i have to walk into.
There is at least one professional camera which can embed GPS coordinates in the image data itself, in the form of an additional line in the EXIF tag. It has limitations when you're indoors, I would imagine, but great for most hiking or driving conditions.
This would be immensely popular for real estate agents who need to correlate pictures to addresses all the time.
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Bill Gates has a private project (Corbis, not affiliated with MS) growing to amass a large collection of photographs. It already does a good business of finding and licensing photos for almost any use. They could be trying to get more for the collection, or to join up in an IP pipeline to benefit both companies.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
I can't wait until GPS technology is small enough and cheap enough to put inside the camera. It'd be great for looking at holiday photos...
"Where the hell was that?"
"Lemme check the map... Oh, that was St Jude's Cathedral."
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
It would be nice to see your maps plotted on Digital Raster Graphic (DRG) maps. Though you'd probably need more horsepower to serve them up. And despite being public domain U.S. government data, they are pretty difficult to get for free. :(
:)
I have found free DRG data and plotted GPS routes on them for trip reports on my website. I haven't found any tools for doing this that will let me make up these maps and publish the result with no strings attached, so I've settled for overlaying my GPS track onto the map with Photoshop.
http://boonedocks.net/travel/
If anyone knows of a free/cheap tool where I can feed it my GPS track data and a public-domain DRG TIFF file, and plot the result, let me know.
Storing GPS data in each photo seems like overkill to me. If the subject is distant, like a mountain, the lat/lon won't really convey what you want. And maybe I don't want someone to know the GPS coordinates of my house if I take a picture of my dog on the couch.
I was just at a microsoft presentation at my university this week, and the guy was cool enough to demo the lastest build of longhorn. one of the things he showed off was the photo viewer/editor that had facial recognition. it could scan a picture, find peoples faces, let you click and name them, then tell the app to find all other pictures with that person in them. i have been a "mac zealot" for years, and even i must say that it was pretty cool. the guy made a good point that "shouldnt we all be expecting computers to be able to do this kinda stuff by now anyways?" and it's true.
The "Insert Quote Here" line is almost as predictable as inserting an actual quote.
Doesn't the EXIF specification already allow for information such as GPS location to be saved in the tag?
http://www.exif.org/
There also appears to be a propposal for LocationIFD, to further enhance/add to this functionality.
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
As a young (19,) long distance hiker (Hiked the entire Appalachian Trail last year) I'm going to be pretty suprised if he can stick anywhere near that schedule. He's planning on going from Pinkham notch to Caratunk in 6 days, which is ~167 miles. That area is on par with the hardest sections of the trail, most thruhikers would be very impressed at averaging 20miles/day through there, yet he's intending to average 28!? In October no less, when there's could easily be a fair amount of snow on the ground. This hike has a lot common with M$, at least as far as big talk goes.
Blue Sky Tomorrows